Nancekuke History

Went to the National Archives at Kew last weekend.  Hopefully this was my last trip to find documents, but I'm sure there will be gaps and I'll need to go back again.

All the documents are now sitting in eight A3 sized display books (the photocopiers in the reading room are all A3 only).  Its not uncommon for people viewing documents in the reading room to photograph them rather than photocopy, but I prefer to rifle through paper versions even when they are copies.  To be honest, before I started I had planned to scan the copies onto computer at home but as I don't have an A3 scanner that plan didn't work!

This is clearly a good time to start studying Britain's post war chemical warfare policy, as there appears to be an annual drip feed of newly released documents.  Many government documents related to chemical warfare appears to be held for 50 years (or even more) before release to the Public Records Office.   So it is not unusual to read through a file and find a grey card advising that the document I am looking for has been removed from the file until some specified later date.  As an example, the 1953 Cabinet Defence Committee meeting minutes and papers were released in 1983, but many of the sets of minutes are copies with sections blanked out.  Fortunately, many of the items related to chemical warfare were released to the file in 2003.